The Rewards of Caregiving for Communally Motivated Parents

Abstract

Research on the provision of need-based care in communal relationships has focused exclusively on adult close relationships. For the first time, we extend communal theory to the parent–child relationship to understand how communally motivated parents feel when giving care to their children. In a cross-sectional study (N = 696), a 10-day experience sampling study (N = 118), and an experimental study (N = 367), we found that communally motivated parents felt more authentic than less communally motivated parents when providing care to their children; in turn, feeling more authentic was associated with greater emotional well-being, parent–child relationship quality, and responsiveness to a child’s needs. These effects could not be attributed to child-centrism, idealization of parenthood, care difficulty, children’s mood, or the specific caregiving behavior in which parents engaged. The findings of the current studies contribute to an emerging body of research on parenting and well-being by highlighting for whom parenting may be maximally rewarding and why.